You know how words often pop up and become more common place depending on the cultural context of the time. Think like ‘brain rot’ or ‘rizz’ or my personal favourite ‘cooked’ (if you’re confused by any of these, go find a Gen Z). Anyway, there's a word doing the rounds in high performance sport right now, that I don’t think was a thing a decade ago. It’s snuck into our vocabulary much like ‘cooked’ has.

That word is ‘compliant’.

I hear it in debriefs. I hear it in review meetings. "We need our players to be more compliant." My understanding is that it usually means “we need to execute the game plan. Consistently. Without deviation. Do what the structure asks, when it asks it.”

I’ve always felt a little bit confused by the word though. As coaches, is that actually what we're after?

For me, compliance means doing something because you know you should. You've been given the plan, you understand the plan, and you execute the plan because that's the deal.

But, let me contrast that with a different word.

Commitment.

Commitment means doing something because you believe it. You're not running someone else's idea. You've made it yours. So do we want compliance, or commitment?

You could say most performance environments are designed to become compliance factories. Enormous energy goes into consistent execution of:

Coaches spend years refining it, and in a lot of ways this is a very good thing. You need structure. You need shared language. You need people who can run a system without it collapsing the moment someone gets tired or injured. It creates the default, the ‘standard operating procedure’ for people. It’s also easier to build. You can build it with authority. Set the standard, hold the line, reward the players who fall in step, manage out the ones who don't. It's controllable. It's measurable. You can point to it on a whiteboard or in a stats sheet.

Commitment doesn't work that way. You can't mandate belief. You can demand someone be "all in," but the demand itself does none of the work. Commitment has to be built, not imposed. And that means we need to lead in a different way. It requires us to design our environment in a way that signposts and reinforces different behaviours.

If compliance is top-down “here's the plan, execute it”, commitment is closer to a negotiation. It requires players to understand not just what the plan is, but why. It requires them to have had a genuine hand in shaping it, or at least to have been properly heard on it. Why? So that when they run it, they're running something they believe rather than something they've been issued. That's a much messier process for a coach or leader to hold. It means sharing leadership in ways that can feel, in the moment, like losing control. It means trusting players with more of the why and the how, not just the what. It means tolerating disagreement while the plan is still being built, because a plan that's been genuinely argued over and landed on together generates far more belief than one that's simply announced from the front.

It also asks for real trust in both directions. Leaders have to trust that players, given more ownership, will use it well. Players have to trust that leaders actually want their input, not just their agreement dressed up as input.

None of that is comfortable. Compliance is neat. Commitment is not.

There's research behind this, even where it doesn't use the word "commitment." Self-determination theory, the foundational work of Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, has shown for decades that people are motivated most effectively, and for the longest, when they experience genuine autonomy, not when they're pushed and pulled by external control. In sport specifically, researchers like Sophia Jowett have found the same pattern holds: athletes coached with more autonomy support show higher intrinsic motivation, better wellbeing, and, the part that should matter most in a performance environment, better performance under pressure.

I’m generalising here, but I do think there are some ways to think about behaviours and how they show up, using these two terms as lenses:

*That question can feel like friction in the moment. Coaches under time pressure often experience it as pushback and shut it down. But it's usually the opposite of a problem. It's someone doing the work of turning your plan into their plan.

Like I mentioned, I’m generalising a bit here. But these types of behaviours are the kind of thing you can start noticing in your people and your environment.

I think the environments willing to do the messier work are the ones that get the most out of their people. So here's the question I'd put to anyone leading people or teams in a performance setting: are you building compliant people, or committed ones? Be honest about which one your environment is actually optimised for because the systems, the meetings, and the way decisions get made will tell you the truth, even if the language everyone uses doesn't.

And if the honest answer is compliance: what would it take to shift it? What would you have to let go of? Who would need more of a real voice than they currently have?

Two quotes for you this week. I’m feeling generous:

“If the atmosphere was supportive and fostered autonomy and a sense of belonging, then the athletes were tougher and performed better.”

Steve Magness in his book “Do Hard Things”

“The bottom line is that people don’t do their best by being told: they do their best when they have the strength of purpose to do it their way and are motivated from within”

Craig Lewis in his book “Lead to Succeed”

This a good read, from Steve Magness and Brad Stulberg, from their excellent website and newsletter, The Growth Equation.

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